That is All I Ask For: Chapter 13: Ashes and Asphalt

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Micah hadn't slept in over forty hours.

He sat alone in his penthouse office, surrounded by data streams glowing on transparent screens. Every light felt too bright. Every hum from the equipment too sharp. He rubbed at his temples, willing the headache away, but it sat behind his eyes like a phantom.

Outside, rain streaked down the glass, silvering the skyline. The city looked like a ghost—blurred, too fast, too far away.

He closed his eyes and tried to breathe.
But all he could hear was Julian's scream.

"Micah, brake's not responding—"
"Get off the grid!"
"I can't—!"

The crash wasn't loud. Not in his memories. It was just a bloom of light and silence and then everything after turned to ash.

Micah opened his eyes and stared blankly at the console. He hadn't meant to replay the footage again—but there it was, looping silently.

Julian's last lap. The overhead cam. The turn they didn't make.

His fingers clenched around the edge of the desk. He hadn't cried. Not when it happened. Not at the funeral. Not even when he walked away from racing and poured everything into Eclipse.

But tonight...

Tonight, he felt close.

So close.

Meredith knew something was off the moment Micah missed a call.

He never missed calls. Not from her.

She stood outside the main garage, staring at the clock, then at her comms. No ping. No status update. Not even a shadow from his apartment feed.

She chewed her lip, debating.

Then she dialed an old contact—someone who used to work on Eclipse's earliest engines. Someone who had known Micah when Eclipse was still being built in a one-room garage with borrowed tools and secondhand oil.

"Clarke." She said. "Tell me everything you remember about Micah before he became a ghost."

Dante stood on the overlook above the racetrack, watching practice runs blur beneath the floodlights.

His car had improved. His reflexes were sharp. Daniel was back to being a reliable co-driver. The team was finally syncing again.

But it wasn't whole.

He could feel Micah's absence like an engine misfire—quiet but devastating.

He remembered the look on Micah's face the night he warned him about Vex. The flicker of pain when Dante had dismissed him.
He remembered how Micah had left the control room without saying goodbye.

And he remembered the way he stood, bloodied and quiet, after saving him and Daniel.

"If I turn around, I won't be able to leave."

Dante hadn't realized until that moment just how much Micah had been holding up—not just the team, but him.

Micah sat in the darkness, the footage still paused on Julian's final frame.

He whispered to the screen, voice raw.

"I told you to slow down. I should've known Vex would do something stupid. You always trusted too easily."

He leaned forward, elbows on knees, breath unsteady.

"I should've been the one in that car."

He wiped at his eyes, surprised to feel them wet.

And then, just like that, the quiet broke.

His chest tightened. His hands shook. He gasped for breath like it was being stolen from him.

He staggered to his feet—knocking over a chair—and gripped the windowsill, forehead pressed to cold glass.

He didn't know how long he stood there.

"Micah."

Meredith stood at the door, drenched. She'd overridden security.

Micah turned slowly. His face was pale, his expression unreadable. But his eyes were rimmed red.

"Don't." He said. "Not now."

She ignored him. Walked in. Shut the door.

"You need to stop pretending you're fine."

Micah looked away.

Meredith crossed her arms. "Julian wouldn't want this."

At that, he did react. His jaw clenched. "Don't use his name like that."

"I'm using it because you won't."

Silence.

Then she softened.

"You're not alone, Micah. You never were. Even when you left, I was still here. So was the team."

"The team didn't want me."

"No. They didn't understand you. But that's changing."

He closed his eyes. "It's too late."

"It's not." Meredith whispered. "Come back. Even if it's just to watch. Even if it's just for one day. Let them see you."

Micah didn't answer. But she saw it.

A crack in the armor.

And behind it, something beginning to shift.

The hum of the garage was constant—low, industrial, familiar.

Dante sat on the edge of the pit wall, feet dangling off the edge, helmet in his lap. He wasn't watching the track. He wasn't listening to the engineers. He was just... sitting.

Trying to make sense of what felt increasingly impossible to ignore.

Micah wasn't just hurting. He was breaking.

And none of them had seen it in time.

Meredith approached quietly, a datapad tucked under one arm. She looked tired. Not physically—emotionally. The kind of tired that settles in your bones when you've been holding everything together for too long.

"Got a minute?" She asked.

Dante nodded.

She sat beside him. The space between them held the weight of months.

"I went digging." She said without preamble. "Talked to Clarke. One of the first people Micah hired when he founded Eclipse."

Dante turned slightly. "What did you find?"

She didn't answer right away. Instead, she pulled up a file—photos, old track layouts, footage so grainy it looked like a memory burned into film.

"Before Eclipse, before any of this... Micah was the name in the underground circuit. He didn't race dirty. Didn't fix matches. Just won. Over and over."

She showed him a short clip. A sharp, precise maneuver through a corner, engine screaming, tires holding at the edge of grip.

"He was dangerous." Meredith said softly. "But never reckless."

Dante watched the footage, silent.

"Julian was his partner back then. They were nearly unbeatable. Until the night it all ended."

She showed him the incident report. It wasn't official—just what the old guard remembered. Two cars sabotaged before the final race. Julian's didn't survive the crash. Micah barely did.

"Vex?" Dante asked quietly.

Meredith nodded. "No proof. Just whispers. And regret."

Dante stared at the screen for a long moment. "He never told anyone."

"He thought it would make him weak. Thought no one would understand." She paused. "Especially you."

His jaw clenched.

"I should've been there." He said.

"You couldn't be." She replied. "He wasn't ready to let you."

Micah stood beneath a tree on the edge of a forgotten cemetery, the wind cold against his neck.

Julian's grave was unremarkable. Just a flat stone, half-covered in leaves. The world had moved on.

But Micah hadn't.

He crouched down slowly, brushing the stone clean with his sleeve.

"Hey, Jules." he murmured.

He didn't know what to say. The words stuck.

"You always said I overthought everything. That I held too much in. Guess I'm still doing that."

The silence stretched.

"I left it all after you were gone. I built something new. Something that didn't have your blood on it."

He swallowed hard.

"But even now, I can't drive without hearing your voice in the comms. Can't see a crash without seeing you."

He sat down in the dirt beside the stone, elbows on knees.

"I let people in, Jules. Just one more time. And when they turned away, it felt like you died all over again."

Footsteps crunched behind him.

Micah didn't turn.

"You followed me."

Dante didn't deny it. He sat beside him, close but not touching.

"I needed to understand." Dante said.

Micah let out a breath, soft and weary. "You do now?"

"Some of it. Enough to know I owe you more than I gave."

Silence fell between them, not heavy—but reverent. Like both were standing inside a truth they hadn't known how to face.

"I don't want you to forgive me." Dante said. "Not yet. Maybe not ever."

Micah looked at him then.

"But I'm still here." Dante added. "And I'm not going to vanish this time."

Micah's gaze softened.

"Good." He said.

The garage had always been loud.

Even on the quietest days, there was a rhythm—wrenches clicking into place, engines humming through test starts, comms buzzing with telemetry chatter. But in the days following Julian's memorial visit, it was as though a deeper silence had lifted.

And Micah was back.

Not fully. Not loudly.

But sometimes, in the early morning, they'd find a note scribbled beside the diagnostics screen—his unmistakable handwriting correcting a calibration.

Sometimes, they'd find him already gone, coffee still warm on the counter and a set of cleaned tools in the sink.

Meredith noticed first. She didn't say anything. She just smiled to herself, tugged on her gloves, and got back to work.

Daniel noticed next.

He walked into the simulation bay one morning and found Micah standing there, arms crossed, watching a replay of Dante's cornering technique.

For a long moment, neither spoke.

Then Daniel quietly said, "You were right. About Vex. About everything."

Micah didn't look at him. "That doesn't help now."

"No, it doesn't." Daniel admitted. "But it's the truth."

He paused.

"I thought you wanted control. That you didn't trust anyone. But... I get it now. You were holding us together while pretending not to."

Micah said nothing.

Daniel nodded to the screen. "Dante's cornering's still sloppy on the exit. You gonna fix that or should I tell him he sucks myself?"

That made Micah smirk—barely, but it was there.

The team felt different. Lighter.

As if the fog that had once dulled every movement was finally lifting.

Dante had started speaking more. Not orders—just presence. He checked on the new engineers. He reviewed designs with Daniel. He even helped patch one of the coolant lines on Meredith's request, shirt covered in grime.

When Micah walked in that evening, no one flinched.

No one stared.

Someone passed him a torque wrench like it was the most natural thing in the world.

Meredith approached from behind, holding a datapad.

"New sponsor's interested." She said. "But they want assurance that Zero Eclipse won't implode mid-season."

Micah raised an eyebrow. "What assurance did you give them?"

"I told them we had two anchors now. Not one." She looked at him. "And neither of them are leaving again."

Micah didn't reply, but he stayed.

The next morning, Micah stood on the pit wall, arms folded, as the sun rose in streaks of gold and silver across the asphalt.

Dante walked up beside him.

No words. Just quiet.

Below them, the cars lined up for early test laps. Daniel was already in position, reviewing a HUD display. Meredith sipped her coffee with one eye on the readouts.

Dante tilted his head, just slightly. "Think we'll make it?"

Micah gave a half-shrug. "Only if you stop oversteering on turn six."

Dante snorted. "You could've just said yes."

"I could've."

A long pause.

"I meant what I said." Dante added. "Back at the cemetery."

Micah's voice was quiet. "I know."

"And I'll keep proving it, even if it takes the rest of the season."

Micah looked at him. His eyes weren't guarded anymore—just tired. But for the first time, that tiredness looked shared.

"You don't have to prove it." He said softly. "You just have to stay."

Later that night, as the garage lights dimmed and the hum of machines faded into quiet, Micah lingered.

Not because he had to.

But because—for the first time in a long time—he wanted to.

He watched the team laughing over takeout on the hood of a car. Meredith waving chopsticks at Daniel. Dante wiping sauce off his racing gloves with exaggerated disgust.

Micah leaned against the wall, a small smile flickering on his lips.

He didn't walk over.

Not yet. But he stayed.

And maybe... that was enough for now.

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